[Freegis-list] ArcInfo to Free conversion

[Jan-Oliver Wagner]

On Tue, Jan 09, 2001 at 09:07:44AM -0800, Adrian Custer wrote:
> using the most powerful part of the commercial system and you won't be
                                      ~~~~~~~~~~

Free Software is commercial as well. It differs of course
in the fact that for Free Software only service is to be paid.
So you can have e.g. a service contract for GRASS and pay
an annual fee.

One main advantage of Free Software over proprietary  software
is the lower total cost of ownership. Usually the final
migration to another system is one of the most expensive
parts. Migrating away from a proprietary system is usually
more expensive than moving away from a Free Software product.
Why that? Simply, because a Free Software service company
will give you support for the old and the new system - they
don't really care whether you change.
One the other hand ESRI certainly will not be happy to see
you migrating to another system and they will not support it.
They will always incorporate feature no other competitor
has and recommend you to use the features.

A disadvantage that could rise the total cost of ownership
is the risk that your proprietary system works well at your
company, but the vendor stops supporting version 2 and only
maintains version 3 (and the migration is expensive ...!).
For a Free Software product you are not forced to migrate
to a new release. You buy support to the release you like to
use.

What I am saying is that for the decision whether to
replace a proprietary product there are of course
some practical aspects (hi Adrian!), but a long-term
planning view must also be considered.

Cheers

	Jan
-- 
Jan-Oliver Wagner               http://intevation.de/~jan/

Intevation GmbH	              	     http://intevation.de/
FreeGIS	                               http://freegis.org/